august wrap-up

christian found this on fb yesterday and i loved it!

hurricane irene aftermath continues:

we came home from fischetti's around 5 on monday. i still had our fridge full of food to deal with. we had taken a few bags to friends houses, but that still left a lot to do. i just kept hoping all throughout the day that by 5 (when mindy's babysitter got there) i would be coming home to a house with electricity. all day i kept checking and checking our neighborhood fb page. one of our neighbors, who happens to work for the electric company kept promising we would get electricity by monday.

when 5 o'clock brought no such luck, matt went off to borrow a generator (from someone in the ward who had just gotten electricity, who had borrowed it from someone else in the ward that gotten electricity back on sunday) and the girls and i played outside. alexis had stayed at robins, then went to the twins (they had electric!) and christian went to the park as soon as we got home.

i checked things in our fridge before matt got the power going to it and everything had stayed cold! the 30 frozen water bottles had worked! blessings! with the fridge and the sump pump getting the power they needed, i felt a huge load off. it had been a beautiful day and our house was cool and comfortable, so we decided to stay the night at home, in the hopes that the girls would get more sleep in their own beds. frankie had a rough night sleep both saturday and sunday night, which meant that so did matt and i.

we put the girls to bed, said goodnight to christian (who was reading by candlelight, so very romantic!) and got into bed, when LIGHT! we looked at each other, not quite sure what had just happened, christian ran upstairs, and a cheer went up in the neighborhood. after 51 hours, we had electricity! the hum of generators slowly went away, and invigorated by our new power, we stayed up for another few hours. :)

so thankful!

and yet, as soon as the lights came on, i felt like crying. like after all the stress of the week

(getting ready for the first day of school, earthquake, the first day of school, thuderstorm and tornado, getting ready for hurricane, hurricane, no electricty...) 

and it was finally over, like i just couldn't keep it in anymore. i held it back though, because i was surrounded by boys that would think i was crazy.
(although matt did tell me later that he felt the same thing!)

so i woke up yesterday exhausted. and facing a messy, messy house.

it was like, having an extra family spend the day and night, + camping, + an unexpected night away from home (and all the packing and unpacking that entails), + a natural disaster (and all the extra clothing and towels and supplies that requires), + a messy family of 6.

there were water bottles to refill and put away, broken glass and dish soap to clean up, laundry to do, and wet carpets downstairs to help dry.

and this mama was exhausted.

 

i dragged and did a little bit all day.

i did rustle up enough energy to take the girls for a walk to the library (christian was helping a neighbor with hurricane clean-up and alexis was still at the twins) to get books for preschool.

when matt got home he took the girls back outside to play with neighbors and we had hamburger helper for dinner. slowly we are getting back to normal.

and every time i want to complain (because this writing isn't complaining, it's just preserving the facts for posterity;) i look at half of our neighbors, with every belonging that used to be in their basements out on their driveways, throwing away all the contents of their refrigerators, and still finding flooding. i know we got off really easy. 

we are so very blessed.

we're on day 3 of no school. 

(for those of you keeping track, that's 3 days in school, 3 days out of school)

there are rumors of no school for at least a week (or more!) because of extensive damage, but nothing officially called yet.

there are still almost 9000 people in our county alone without power (17,000 total from our electric co.)

our governor toured st. marys county on tuesday and said that as far as maryland goes, we took the brunt of the storm. and as rumors go, there are rumors of another possible hurricane. we are praying that things return to normal and we end this hurricane season quickly.

i know i'm ready for autumn up in here.